The idea of games getting a second chance isn’t entirely new these days. Remakes buff older titles to a sheen, as creators fix technical issues, while ambitious open-world titles have bugs squashed by patches. iOS games can be released and almost immediately updated, developers offering new levels, characters or even an overhaul of their monetisation strategy.

But Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge represents a second bite at the cherry of a very different kind. The original game was widely denounced upon release, most critics declaring it vastly inferior to its predecessors. The absence of veteran director Tomonobu Itagaki was keenly felt in a game that ignored the achievements of its forerunners for two reasons. Firstly, to focus on attracting a wider audience with simpler combat – in the process losing much of what had defined the series in the first instance - and to attempt to get under the skin of its hero in a story that could generously be described as misguided.

Nintendo’s continued desire to both promote the Japanese games industry and to increase its standing with the enthusiast market has led it to an unlikely partnership with Team Ninja that has allowed the latter to try again with the game it made such a mess of. The result may only be a qualified success, but Razor’s Edge is an undeniable improvement. It’s essentially a director’s cut, the ludic equivalent of a Hollywood helmsperson taking a pair of scissors to their own work, though the reason this works better is as much about what’s been added as what’s been removed.

First, the cuts. Gone is the uncomfortable murder of unarmed opponents, and gone are many of the barely-interactive sequences that merely required you to press one or two buttons to pull off protagonist Ryu Hayabusa’s most flamboyant moves. The tedious soul-searching has been all but confined to (thankfully skippable) cutscenes, and as such everything flows much better. The plot’s inherent silliness feels less jarring next to its clumsy attempts at gravitas: this is a game, after all, in which you use a bow and arrow to take down an attack helicopter, and face off against a clumsy robotic T-Rex.

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The pattern of play hasn’t changed a great deal, but the violence has finally reached its full gory potential, with the addition of dismemberment and decapitation. It’s odd to praise a game for such unrelenting brutality, but it’s at least consistent with the splatters of blood that accompany each flesh-piercing stab and slash, lending the action a greater sense of physical impact the original game lacked. Reaching the stage where you can emerge from an encounter unharmed will take some time – not least because the difficulty level has been ramped up to something more in line with the series’ hardcore reputation – but it’s worryingly satisfying to finish a battle unscathed while your opponents lie in bloody pieces on the floor.

There’s extra content, too. Weapons can be purchased rather than having to wait for their availability as downloadable content, and the game’s slim runtime has been extended by the addition of two new missions. There’s a new female ninja to play as – fans of Tecmo games will instantly recognise Ayame from the Dead or Alive series – and though the idiosyncrasies of her moveset are a little different from Ryu’s, there’s little to separate her stages from those of the protagonist.

These changes fail, however, to mask the fundamental problems at the heart of the game. Combat is fast and fluid, but it’s also wearyingly repetitive, and even with the new weapons, there’s a distinct lack of variety. With little bar chunks of story to break up the action, your thumbs and fingers will begin to ache from constantly dodging then attacking, and periodically shifting the unhelpful camera to give you a better viewpoint. The increased difficulty level is a wise move in one respect, but it ruins many of the boss battles, as enormous chunks disappear from your health meter from a single hit. You can, of course, play more cautiously, but that only serves to turn ostensibly exciting encounters into tedious wars of attrition, as you slowly chip, chip, chip away at a seemingly endless life bar.

There are glimpses of greatness here, fleeting moments when the core combat with which the series made its name feels as thrilling as it once did. Yet in attempting to fix a game whose flaws were so deeply ingrained, Team Ninja gave itself an impossible task. The result, therefore, is an admirable improvement, but ultimately this Razor’s Edge is decidedly rusty.